Reward offered for UK Prime Minister and Home Secretary's fingerprints
Glyn sez, "Privacy International and the UK's NO2ID are offering a reward for the first person to collect and submit the UK Prime Minister's and Home Secretary's fingerprints. Plus you can download and print your own Wanted Poster! The poster is also available in higher resolution formats including PNG, PDF and jpeg. Building on the great work from the Chaos Computer Club in collecting the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister, they are campaigning to raise politicians' awareness of the dangers of collecting this type of biometric data."
Around the world, politicians are now calling for the mass fingerprinting of foreigners. The UK is relatively unique in that the Government is calling for the collection of all ten fingerprints of all citizens and residents and placing them into a single centralised database for wide access by police, and other government agencies. The Government is clear that it wants to treat all citizens as though they are criminals, having promised the police that they can trawl through the fingerprint database for forensic purposes.Link (Thanks, Glyn!)Following recent data breach scandals, including the loss of 25 million records on British families, we are not confident in the ability of the Government to secure this information. In fact, even the Government's advisors, including the recent report for HM Treasury by Sir James Crosby argues against the collection of unique biometrics; but the Home Office insists that it will continue along this hazardous path. As fingerprinting systems expand to enable people to secure their computers, possessions and even homes, the centralisation of biometrics will increase the risks of breaches.
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There's a reward being offered for the UK prime minister and home secretary?? I hadn't even realized they were on the run from the law.
"I hadn't even realized they were on the run from the law."
And here I thought they'd been kidnapped. Nice headline, boingboing!
Maybe the Home Secretary kidnapped the Prime Minister.
This is just too cool for school. Especially when read in light of the fact fingerprint readers can be fooled four out of five times by wax copies of fingerprints. Blair had cash for peers; Brown will have a series of bank robberies to explain.
Can we expect to see them both turning up to all photo opportunities wearing latex gloves from now on? Or maybe secret service staff doing things like collecting their beer mugs when we get the kind of "meet the people" event where they demonstrate they're one of us by drinking a half of shandy in some northern village in front of TV cameras.
The increased pressures from over population are a real problem. One way to handle those pressures is through keeping information on people. Maybe there should be increased transparency in Gov or something but the concerns about what happens when you have way way too many people in one place are legitimate.
I don't think we are going to stop this push for "total information awareness". Perhaps a better response it to demand greater transparency and accountability?
On the other hand over population is self correcting in the long run. Especially as it seems we are unable to make rational choices about population.
This will come in handy, of course.
You know, when the Slitheen come to town.
"I don't think we are going to stop this push for 'total information awareness'. Perhaps a better response it to demand greater transparency and accountability?"
No thanks. I'll pass.
"The concerns about what happens when you have way way too many people in one place are legitimate."
Why? Because someone might slip out from under the thumb of the corporate police state?
Wait, I forgot--it's about the children! Oh well, since you put it that way....
Noen: people do make rational choices about population. Poor rural patriarchical people have lots of kids. Richer urban less-sexist people have fewer kids. For both groups this is a rational allocation of resources. Fortunately, for the first time in history people of the latter type are now a majority. We have become an urban species in the past year or so.
In my lifetime (probably) and your lifetime (almost certainly) the major issue facing the world will be depopulation, not over-population. It just won't be called that. It appears that the preferred name for the problem of depopulation is "population aging".
It's going to be amusing over the next decade or so watching the same brutally ignorant pundits telling us in the same breath that we are doomed because there are too many people and we are doomed because there aren't enough. Because remember: all change is BAD! That's what conservatives believe, anyway.
The most fundamental tool in stabilizing populations is investment in women-run enterprises in the developing world. The wealthier, more empowered and more educated women are, the fewer kids they have. Everyone wins, and this is a trend that can be observed in many societies, particularly free-er and more democratic ones like India.
Only if we recede into some kind of relative dark age where ignorant ideologues of the Islamo-Christian fundamentalist variety have their way with women's lives do we run any risk of not seeing populations stabilize in the 21st century.
I guess now we'll find out if BB comments get modded out of existence for being wildly off-topic!
Tom,
I'll bite. :)
I just want to add that per overpopulation, choices are sometimes made that don't have economic considerations behind them, as you hinted at above.
Think of the world's Catholics (there are lots of them) not using contraceptives because some guy in a pointy hat says God thinks it's wrong. Thanks, Pointy Hat Guy! Just what we need!
PS: this is a beautiful example of creative political action; of people empowering themselves to have an effect, rather than waiting for their elected officials to get off their asses (or in this caes, arses) and do something. I approve holeheartedly.
Nick D
"No thanks. I'll pass."
So you would rather that government be less transparent and less accountable? Odd choice that.
"Why? Because someone might slip out from under the thumb of the corporate police state?"
I'm not advocating for that. I'm trying to go beyond the knee-jerk response typical of either the left or the right. Why? Because it's simply a fact that there is a greater need for security in densely populated areas.
Asian societies have been dealing with this problem longer than we have and have developed social and governmental structures to cope with the crush of millions of people living in a very small space. People there accept that they have far less privacy than we would be comfortable with in the West.
We will likewise have to come to some sort of solution to the problems inherent with dense populations. This is reality, it isn't something the left can wish away and it is certainly a mistake of the right to believe we can just trust authority.
Re Tom:
Yeah I understand all that. It's the trip over that hump in the middle that's scary. And sure, all those things you mention would be nice but I don't see even the slightest political will to give women around the world more choices or to make people feel safe enough to switch from being r-selectors to K-selectors. Since I don't believe the political will exists to do anything about over population I suspect that mother nature will make our choices for us. That will be very unpleasant.
Noen: We're already most of the way to the top of the hump. The rate of population growth is slowing down and the only reason it isn't dropping faster is that increased longevity is offsetting the effects of dropping fertility.
I'm feeling optimistic today, so people like this look to me like evidence that some kind of will exists to improve the lives of women in the developing world.
Nick D: most of the world's Catholics are ignoring the guy in the pointy hat on that particular issue. Although if I believed in that kind of god I'd be praying that there is a very special place in hell set aside for him for using what influence he has to ensure the world's supply of unwanted babies won't be drying up any time soon.
are there any plastic surgeons in the house? Many years ago, when fingerprint forensics were just starting to be used for identifying criminals, a few desperate crooks used methods like acid or crude surgery to obliterate their natural prints. This in fact frequently backfired since the mutilations proved more distinctive than the original prints.
Today, I am sure medical science has advanced to the point where I could have my prints made completely smooth,painlessly,safely, cheaply and above all, relatively uniformly smooth. Making my fingers useless to identify me with. There is no law forbidding this. Yet.
Dactylography is only one form of criminal identification.
While its use is powerful, many other forms of CID are still going to get you.
"So you would rather that government be less transparent and less accountable? Odd choice that."
I see I've been misinterpreted. I don't want my information handled transparently and with accountability. I don't want my information handled at all. Period. Not stuff like fingerprints, no.
And I don't want any part of "total information awareness." Count me out, please.
"Because it's simply a fact that there is a greater need for security in densely populated areas."
Well, I hate to be a knee-jerk liberal and all but I don't understand what security you feel you'd be getting from being fingerprinted. The kind of crime that arises in urban areas where there are lots of people crammed together is better dealt with by more cops on the beat than with biometrics.
Bngbng:
"Pudding" is incomprehensible to us here in the Colonies. Try "dessert."